Zephaniah

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. – Zephaniah 3.17

There are many great Bible verses but for some time this has been my favorite.  The verse begins by reminding the people of God that He is present with them.  God’s presence was of profound importance to the Hebrew people, to whom this verse was addressed.  This was dramatically demonstrated during the Exodus.  The Hebrews had been hustled out of Egypt, due to the progressively destructive plagues God had showered on the Egyptians.  But Pharaoh was an unusually stubborn man, so with the departed Hebrews’ dust barely settled, he began to obsess over his enormous loss of cheap labor.  Egypt’s engine was strolling off into the desert.  So Pharaoh mustered the elite of his great army to chase down the virtually defenseless Hebrews.  The Egyptians caught up and trapped the Hebrews against the Red Sea. 

But God was with the Hebrews, going before them visibly as a pillar of cloud by day, and as a pillar of fire by night.  When the Egyptians approached, the pillar moved between the two groups.  This seemed to unnerve the Egyptians; the army kept its distance all night long.  In the morning, the Lord parted the Red Sea and the Hebrews walked across a dry sea bed.  When the Egyptians pursued, the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw them into a panic. Exodus 14.24  Shortly thereafter, the sea, recovering its gravity, drowned the heavily armored Egyptians.  The greatest army on earth wasn’t even given the opportunity to brandish its weapons. 

Not long after this, but after God had provided the Ten Commandments and the people had worshipped a golden calf, God expressed his frustration to Moses.  Say to the people of Israel, “You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.” Exodus 33.5  But Moses, embracing his role of intercessor, pleaded with God: If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.  For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people?  Is it not in your going with us, that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth? Exodus 33.15,16  Of all of Moses’ heroic acts, this one was probably the most important, for God relented and remained with the Israelites.

Moses talked of the Hebrews being “a distinct people” because of their association with God.  This was certainly true, and the assignment of the Ten Commandments added considerably to the meaning of that relationship but, little doubt, Moses was also thinking, “If God turns his back on us, we won’t be thinking about being distinct, because we are going to be extinct.  

These early events in the history of Israel would surely have come to mind as Zephaniah spoke.  The hearers would have remembered that the presence of God had always called for a response of purity while, at the same time, had served as their only hope and assurance of preservation.  And not to belabor the obvious, but the reason the book of Zephaniah has been preserved is so all its readers would be reminded of the same.

As crucial as the first part of the verse is, the second part seems even more wonderful.  I will put myself on a limb here and suggest that what all humans desire most is to be enveloped in intimate relationships.  All our activities either serve to this end, or serve to distract us from our failures at achieving it.  Some of us have never experienced such a thing.  Some of us thought we were experiencing it, only to have a relationship blow up, or slowly fade.  Some of us are experiencing it now and the joy of it makes us giddy.

But maintaining intimate relationships is extremely difficult.  Chrissie Hynde wrote the lyric, “When love walks in the room; everybody stand up!”  She was talking about romance, and we all tend to associate intimacy with romantic relationships, but this is not necessarily so.  Another way of defining intimacy is a relationship in which those in it can speak freely and, instead of being met with recrimination or even automatic assent, being met with interest and concern.  

Most relationships are either casual, or are what I would call “truce” relationships.  We all want to be part of valuable relationships, but in relationships there is a correlation between exposure and injury.  All humans exhibit selfishness, impatience, meanness, willfulness, etc.  We hurt the ones we love…and we are hurt by the ones we love.  We deal with these hurts both by forgiveness and by wariness.  We learn to be careful.  We learn to hedge our vulnerability.  To control the disturbance and anger of being hurt, we devise strategies to protect ourselves.  We practice arm’s-length relationships even as we long for intimate relationships.  This internal duplicity is one of the tragic consequences of sin.

Zephaniah addresses this problem by revealing God’s attitude towards us.  The verse becomes very personal in tone.  The “you” should not be understood corporately but as a description of how God feels towards his children individually.  

So, imagine running into Jesus on the street.  The two of you approach.  There is light in his eyes.  This alone says quite a bit.  When the light from someone else’s face shines on you it is always a wonder. 

But Jesus is not limited to a glowing face.  He is exuberant!  He reaches out for a bear hug, and then breaks into song.  I don’t know what the tune or the lyrics could be except that they are about the one whom he embraces…and he sings loudly.  He just doesn’t seem to have much sense for decorum.

Then the ESV translation adds this: he quiets you by his love.  This phrase is evocative of a mom or a dad picking up their injured child.  The embrace is comfort and empathy, and it is the assurance that the pain and troubles will be addressed.  

1 Corinthians 13.12 says, Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  What Zephaniah describes is how God feels about us now, and it is a great wonder and comfort.  But the distance remains.  It doesn’t really work for us to be both intimate and distant.  The joy will be complete when the separation ends.  The reunion will be a great day of joy.

And the establishment of this unimpeded love serves as the foundation for a multitude of similar loves.  For if I have been freed to love the One with unguarded love, I have been freed to love all others who also have been freed.  

The Lord exults over his prize because he sees us better than we see ourselves; he sees  the us that we are becoming, which is something wonderful.  It is the us that we have always longed to be.